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Nov 13, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Laura Belin |Gerald Ott |Matthew Thornburg |Bill Bumgarner
For the first time in six years, Iowa’s junior Senator Joni Ernst will not have a position on the leadership team of U.S. Senate Republicans. On November 13, members of the GOP caucus chose Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas over Ernst for Senate Republican Conference chair, the third-ranking leadership position. According to Andrew Desiderio of Punchbowl News, the vote was 35 to 18.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Gerald Ott |Matthew Thornburg |Laura Belin |Bill Bumgarner
Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association. I read the op-ed Bob Vander Plaats wrote for the Des Moines Register last week. It’s glowingly referenced on the Facebook page of his organization, The FAMiLY Leader. I remember Vander Plaats when he got his knickers in a twist because the Iowa Supreme Court decided the Iowa Constitution’s equal protection clause applied to gay and lesbian people.
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Nov 12, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Matthew Thornburg |Laura Belin |Bill Bumgarner |Jason Benell
Fifth in a series interpreting the results of Iowa’s 2024 state and federal elections. Matthew P. Thornburg is an associate professor at Misericordia University who studies elections. His mother’s side of the family hails from Greene and O’Brien counties, and he maintains close ties to Iowa and its politics. In precincts lying in the path of the Summit Pipeline, Randy Feenstra underperformed the rest of his district slightly.
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Nov 10, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Bill Bumgarner |Jason Benell |Bruce Lear |Zacarias da Mata
Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who workedin hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the state of Iowa. The American people have decided to entrust Donald Trump with their present and their future for the next four years. That’s how elections work. That’s democracy. Voters have empowered the president-elect to seek whatever policy objectives he chooses to pursue. Americans should support Trump when his policies make sense.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Bruce Lear |Emily Bredthauer |Jason Benell |Bill Bumgarner
Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at [email protected] If you’ve had the privilege of walking with a four-year-old, you’ll understand what pure wonder looks like. Their eyes dilate as they purse their lips. They touch the newfound object with loving care.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Jason Benell |Bill Bumgarner |Laura Belin |Emily Bredthauer
Late September wildflowers at Cordova Park Wednesday, Oct 23 2024 0 Comments Nature nerd Emily Bredthauer took the pictures enclosed below at Cordova Park on September 22, 2024. Cordova Park is a 1,050 acre area comprised of woodland, prairie, and bluffs overlooking Lake Red Rock in Marion County. Lake Red Rock was built in the 1960s as a flood control project on the Des Moines River. The namesake of Cordova comes from the small town that occupied the area from 1887-1962.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Jason Benell |Bill Bumgarner |Laura Belin |Bill Brauch
Jason Benell lives in Des Moines with his wife and two children. He is a combat veteran, former city council candidate, and president of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. Christian Nationalism has seen so many victories with the makeup of the highest courts at both the state and federal levels. Time and again right-wing courts seem poised to enact theocracy by privileging religious belief over equality under the law and even basic human and civil rights.
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Oct 23, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Bill Bumgarner |Laura Belin |Bill Brauch |Douglas Burns
Bill Bumgarner is a retired former health care executive from northwest Iowa who worked in hospital management for 41 years, predominantly in the state of Iowa. I live in a region of Iowa where about 68 percent of voters cast their ballot for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Naturally, that overwhelming majority included many of my friends, neighbors, and those with whom I’ve joined to help enhance our community.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Henry Karp |Douglas Burns |Gerald Ott |Bill Bumgarner
Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization. I was dismayed to read that Republican Party of Iowa state chair Jeff Kaufmann called it “blatantly antisemitic” for Vice President Kamala Harris to choose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, instead of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Douglas Burns |Gerald Ott |Bill Bumgarner |Laura Belin
Douglas Burns is a fourth-generation Iowa journalist. He is the co-founder of the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation and a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, where this article first appeared on The Iowa Mercury newsletter. His family operated the Carroll Times Herald for 93 years in Carroll, Iowa where Burns resides. A modern political Mason-Dixon line appears to be taking form north of Mason City and south of Albert Lea—somewhere around the Minnesota-Iowa border.
